


The Adventurers' Club of Los Angeles

by allredpen



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Watcher Entertainment RPF
Genre: Anal Sex, Drinking, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Semi-Public Sex, Shane and Ryan are insufferable, Shower Sharing, and Shane doesn't know what love is but he sure is in love with Ryan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:47:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26138353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allredpen/pseuds/allredpen
Summary: The Adventurers' Club of Los Angeles' Annual Tiki Night won't know what hit it when the Watcher boys turn up.Shane and Ryan drink too much, throw knives, lack professionalism, and make their crew's life hard.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 36
Kudos: 147
Collections: The Ghosts Are Watching, Weird And/Or Wonderful World: The Lost Season





	The Adventurers' Club of Los Angeles

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of the [Skeptic Believer Book Club's](https://skepticbeliever-bookclub.tumblr.com/) Lost Season Collection.  
> I mean no offense to the members of the Adventurers' Club, I'm sure they're all very nice old white men.

There were, in hindsight, many warning signs that Shane missed in the lead-up to their shoot at The Adventurers' Club of Los Angeles’ famous Tiki Night. It wasn’t even his first choice — Carousel Riders of LA had been giving him the run-around for months — but Tiki Night slots perfectly into the Watcher schedule, and they’re trying to get a move-on with filming for this season of Weird Wonderful, and the Tiki Night purports to be a fun night of guest speakers and a place for the club members to gather and tell tales and drink cocktails. It all seems kind of fun to Shane. 

The organizer’s affected transatlantic accent had struck Shane as a charming idiosyncrasy. That he’d had to get permission for Brittney to attend the men’s only club with them had seemed like an amusing little anachronism. In retrospect, Shane can recall the alarmed look that she and Katie exchange when he blithely tells the story of that phone call. He hadn’t even noticed at the time. The warning signs pile up, but Shane’s nothing if not oblivious in the face of a deadline. 

So, he tees it up, and on a Thursday night he shares a Lyft with Brittney out to Lincoln Heights, dressed in a jaunty green-blue Hawaiian shirt with a matching bandanna, and cargo shorts, just to tie the Dad on Vacation look together. 

Shane’s always nervous ahead of a big shoot; terrified about making a good impression, nervous about getting the shots they need, anxious to put on a good show, but when he approaches the entrance to the club, he’s buoyed and breathless at once; Ryan’s standing, arms crossed, in the footpath outside the clubhouse, and he’s — 

It’s hardly the first time Shane’s thought it, that he’s spotted Ryan from a distance and felt a jolt of something sharp and yearning that gentles into a blurry fondness, but tonight… 

Tonight, in the soft golden light of sunset, Ryan’s leaning against the stucco wall of the building like he owns it, like he owns the whole town. Shane’s shocked to a standstill at the sight of him, lit up like a Californian summer personified in a coral-toned Hawaiian shirt and almost-matching dusky pink shorts that ride high on his thighs. There’s a suspended moment, before Ryan turns and spots him, that has Shane holding his breath in the sun, standing stock still and lost and with absolutely no idea what’s happening to him. 

Until suddenly Brittney is scoffing and shouldering past, and Ryan sees them and pushes off the wall with a bright, wide smile. It’s just the flash of a second, and no more, but it lingers.

Shane’s still holding an inexplicable glow of happiness as they sneak in some b-roll of the peeling exterior of the building that houses the club, and Mark asks Shane and Ryan to walk down the sidewalk past a striking art deco storefront 4 times, which they do, with the backs of their hands brushing. 

He’s upbeat still when they approach the nondescript glass doors, and peer up the staircase beyond. Shane has chosen this place for the decorated membership of explorers and adventurers, so it’s strange to step through the dim entry, plastered with old gig posters and the grubby lino-clad stairs. It’s strange to hear the cacophony of traffic fade as the glass doors fall shut behind them. 

The first tendrils of unease curl around Shane then, and he pulls up short with a foot on the first step. Ryan slams into his back, palms coming out to rest on Shane’s shoulder blades.

“What the fuck?” He mutters, and he moves his hands out to grip Shane’s biceps. “All good, buddy?” 

Shane’s not really sure what the problem is. Nerves, probably, though this is quite late for them to kick in. Or maybe it’s the photos lining the walls on either side of the stairs, packed full of white men in seemingly unironic beige jumpsuits, posing with their feet atop the heads of dead, proud animals. He rolls his shoulders and keeps moving. Immediately behind him, Shane feels Ryan squeeze once and drop his grip. Behind Ryan, Brittney mutters something to Mark. 

“So far, so creepy,” Ryan adds, jovially. Shane can only shake his head.

The second bad omen arrives as they top the stairs and the room beyond comes into view. Shane sees it first, of course, with the benefit of both height and the lead, and once again he pulls up short just inside the entry of the club house. 

“ _Shane,_ get a move on, _”_ Ryan hisses. He hasn’t seen it yet, then. Shane throws a glance back over his shoulder at Mark — down the bottom of the staircase and filming up with his complex rig — and wonders if it’s too late to pull the pin. Because Shane is starting to think that ‘Adventurer’ is a euphemism for something more sinister, more archaic. 

It earns a gasp from Ryan when he finally pulls up beside Shane and sees it; the huge stuffed polar bear that takes pride of place under a painted crest bearing a tall ship. In a glass case in the corner there appears to be a shrunken head, surrounded by tacky plastic plants. 

“Jesus christ,” Ryan mutters. 

“Yeah,” Shane nods. “This episode is never seeing the light of fucken’ day.”

Shane had prepared for the outmoded wood paneling, he’d expected the flags that hang from the ceiling beams like a scout hall on steroids, certainly he’s not surprised at the heaving mass of gray-headed men he glimpses in the main hall. He just hadn’t expected so many — 

“Dead animals,” Ryan breathes, looking a little green. Shane’s inclined to agree; they’ve barely stepped foot in the door, and if he were in any mood to count, he’s sure he’d run out of fingers and toes before getting through the list of exotic creatures he sees spread before him. 

“Gentlemen!” 

Shane’s spoken to Chris, their host and the event organizer, on the phone, and he’d kind of hoped the affected accent had been a joke. 

“Chaps, it’s wonderful to finally meet you,” Chris exclaims, clasping Shane and Ryan by the shoulders in turn as he draws near. “I take it you found the place okay?”

Shane’s struck dumb, still in shock from the oppressive atmosphere created by the dozens of small and large animals that seem to peer down on them from their mounts. Chris, too, isn’t what Shane expected. For one thing, he looks far too young, maybe the only person here with the original pigment in his hair. Additionally, he’s dressed in an honest-to-God pith helmet, paired with a bush jacket. Shane wonders if someone is playing an incredibly elaborate prank on him (Maybe the people from Californian Carousel Connoisseurs? They’d been incensed when Shane chose Carousel Riders of LA over them). 

A _pith helmet_? Shane could already hear the backlash to this episode. 

“It wouldn’t be the first time we willingly walked into somewhere so obviously haunted,” Ryan says with an uneasy grin, his eyes on Shane. Shane, Shane realizes, hasn’t said a word yet. 

“Uh-” _Good start, Shane_. “Thanks for having us! Are the- are all the animals-”

“I bet you have some great stories about all these, uh, artifacts!” Ryan’s actively saving Shane’s ass, now, and has also reached his arm around Shane’s back to pinch him, hard, on the lower back.

Chris, as if _they’re_ the ones colonialist cosplay, looks baffled.

“Chris, I wanted to chat to you about some of the shots we’d like to get tonight,” Brittney with the save, this time, bouncing around Shane to draw Chris away. Mark, shaking his head, follows her. 

“Are you _good,_ Shane?” Ryan rounds on Shane as soon as Chris is out of earshot, grabs his forearm to make his point. “Wanna get it together, bud?”

“We should just leave,” Shane knows he sounds a little wild, but he has an urgent impulse to grab Ryan by the wrist and take those stairs back to the real world two at a time. “This place is terrifying, and we should leave.”

“It’s a little creepy, sure,” Ryan replies. 

“No one in their right mind would want to watch a 20 minute video about a pack of white men and the things they stole from foreign countries-” Shane draws a shuddered breath. Fingers of panic begin closing around his heart. “There’s an actual _shrunken head_ right there, Ryan!”

“Last year,” Ryan starts, his voice low and soothing. That was Shane’s own method of calming Ryan, and he wants to laugh at the reversal of it all. “Last year, we were handling actual _bones_. Since when do you care about the sanctity of human remains?”

“It just-” 

It had been charming at The Mystic Museum, was the thing. Spooky, occult, and charming. Shane found it amusing and he could admit that it helped to feel connected to the owners; he’d found them pleasant, and attractive in their relaxed irreverence, well-dressed and young and covered in tattoos. Shane likes sincere, generally, but the sincerity here feels wrong, feels — 

“It’s different,” he exclaims helplessly, and Ryan’s opening his mouth to reply, but it’s too late. Brittney is ducking her head around the corner of the main hall and beckoning them in.

There’s an elaborate, tacky tiki bar set against one wall, and Shane makes a beeline for it without another word. 

***

They overpour a fantastic Mai Tai here, and Shane knocks back one and then another and wonders how much rum he needs to drink before every advancing minute he spends in this hot, windowless cavern of teak and ill-gotten cultural loot will be bearable. 

The Adventurers’ Club’s guest speakers run more in the vein of Bear Grylls than Walter Raleigh these days; it’s all circumnavigators and master pilots and outdoorsmen. Still, no one here is bothered by the murky history of their colonizing ancestors, and once a year they hold a raucous Tiki night, and drink, and take turns to tell stories of their own acts, or those of their fathers and grandfathers. The islands they sailed to, and were met as gods, the miles of untouched rainforest they traversed, only a rusted machete to fend off danger.

Stories are told, too, of their treasured relics, passed down from family members who swept into lands to which they didn’t belong. They have a whole song and dance about new curios being donated, each member pushing to the front of the crowd, with a bell jar or frame or folio clasped carefully in their hands. Take nothing but ancient culturally significant artifacts, leave nothing but generational trauma. 

Shane gets a glimpse at just one of these artifacts as a benefactor passes right by him; a man in head-to-toe houndstooth, clutching a map in a gilded frame. It’s so old that it’s crumbling under the glass, and Shane reads _Pueblo de los Ángeles_ in fine script across the top. Someone presents a small, gloriously carved teak box that rattles ominously as it moves. Shane presses down a wave of unease by chugging his drink and thinks wistfully of what he could be doing (that is, riding the carousel in Griffith Park with a middle-aged hippie) and sighs. 

But they’re here now, aren’t they, and Ryan, at least, appears to be cautiously having fun; somewhere in the bottom of Shane’s third cocktail he sees that Ryan has sidled up to a quiet old man with a truly outrageous forked beard, who appears to be showing Ryan how to cut a cigar. Shane hears him ask if Ryan knows how to roll a joint, and then asks if he _has_ a joint. 

Shane knows from the shape of his mouth, and the set of his jaw, that Ryan’s holding in a huge, cackling laugh. Shane hopes Mark’s around to catch this moment, but he can’t tear his eyes away for long enough to check. 

Another tall drink is pressed into Shane’s hand as they find their seats for dinner, and then another one finds its way in front of him as the lights dim for the guest speaker — he’s announced as an anthropologist with an expert knowledge on Polynesian culture, and Shane lets himself be mollified just slightly — and Shane can’t even tell if Ryan’s one his first or his fifth, because they’re always served with chaotic pile of tropical fruit and jaunty cocktail umbrellas. 

***

The next drink that’s handed to Shane comes while he’s contemplating the surprisingly educational seminar that had just concluded, (the man had veered into white savior complex territory only once or twice) while they mill again in the crowd of grey hair and khaki. 

There are maybe two women in the room aside from Brittney — who stands tight to Mark’s shoulder, one of the few present who can still see 20 in her rear-view, her chin tilted defiantly — and one of them marches up to Shane and Ryan about a minute after they break out to mingle. 

She hands them each a drink — 

“It’s called a Scorpion, sweetheart,” 

— and she shakes Shane’s hand by clasping it within two of her own bony fingers. 

“Victoria!” is her barked introduction, pumping Shane’s hand vigorously. Victoria’s probably 65, Shane thinks, tanned to leather and strikingly wiry. She wears a black turtleneck and jodhpurs, despite the heat, and she’s intimidating, if Shane’s honest, but he’s charmed in spite of himself. Shane’s normally a beacon to women over 50, who flock to comment on his height and chastise him for his mustache, and pluck coquettishly at his over-long hair. Victoria only gives him a few minutes of her attention, though, before she’s turning to her light blue eyes on Ryan, drilling him about the production, about Watcher, about his love life, his workout routine, as Shane watches on in amusement. Eventually, there’s a proposition:

“Young man,” Victoria starts. “Would you like me to teach you how to throw knives, or are those gorgeous biceps just for show?” and then she’s tearing across the room with one of Ryan’s _‘gorgeous biceps’_ in her clutches, and leaving Shane to gape for a moment before he trots after them. Ryan’s face, as he looks back at Shane through the mingling crowd, is part horror and part glee, and Shane has to wonder why that look always suits him so well. 

***

“A ticket’s a ticket, you see,” Victoria explains in her distinctive South African drawl as she leads them through to an antechamber. “As a woman, I’m not allowed membership, but they _will_ let me pay the exorbitant ticket price for this dinner.”

She draws to a halt in front of a battered target wooden target, which barely clings to the wall. “Now _I’m_ an arachnologist, and my husband works for the post office, but he’s had a membership on my behalf for a decade. Now _I_ -”

Shane feels a bit like he’s dreaming when this strange and brilliant woman draws an elegant tortoiseshell case from her back pocket and opens it to reveal a set of three bronze throwing knives. 

“-I killed a King Cobra in Bhutan in the 80s with one of these, and they still won’t let me in their bloody club.”

“Wow, I, uh-” chokes Ryan. “For some reason I really thought you were joking about the knife throwing.”

Shane didn’t. Victoria looks properly dangerous, and when she draws out a knife and balances it on a finger, he actually takes an involuntary step back. 

“I _never_ joke, darling,” she tells Ryan with a wicked smile, and in an instant the knife goes from balancing on her finger to spinning across the room to landing with an impressive thud. 

Shane yelps, Ryan whoops and claps his hands. 

“Why does an arachnologist need to know how to throw knives?” Shane wonders aloud, and receives no response. 

“Come on, my love,” Victoria beckons Ryan with one hand, presenting the remaining knives with the other, and Shane watches, amused, as Ryan seems drawn to take one without a second thought. He’s like this, Ryan, he’s drawn inexorably to these personalities; people who are smart, and a little mean, and who give him their undivided attention. That last, especially, Ryan thrives under, and here it takes the shape of Victoria moving him around bodily with deceptive strength, adjusting Ryan’s hold on the knives, talking him through the movement required, and generally being about two inches from him. Ryan is flushed to the ears at the attention, but grinning, and he flicks his eyes over to Shane every few minutes. 

Shane’s having the time of his life, leaning against a brown bear, working his way through the Scorpion Victoria gave him, and trying not to watch too obviously the appealing flex of Ryan’s muscular back under the over-tight shirt as he ghosts through the movements that Victoria’s teaching him. She’s a stickler, is Victoria, and she makes Ryan repeat these moves over and over before letting him finally let a knife loose. It hits the wall by the handle with a pathetic tink, and drops on the ground. 

“It’s not so easy, nè?” Victoria cackles, and she’s handing another knife over when a gasp freezes them all in place. 

“ _Victoria!”_ Chris appears in the doorway to the antechamber, his hands astride his hips. Shane thinks it may have had more impact were he not wearing that stupid helmet. “What have I told you about the guests? And taking the guests to the antechamber?”

Victoria tucks the knife back into the pocket of her pants. 

“Ag, man, Are you here to scupper my seduction of this handsome young thing, Christopher?” 

Shane chokes on a maraschino cherry. 

“I thought you never joked, Victoria.” He says, through a cough, and Victoria turns. 

“What joke, darling?” She asks, and with a roguish wink, she’s bounding through the door with more energy than Shane’s mustered in his entire life, and Christopher trailing after her with a lecture it seems he’s given her many times before. 

Shane turns back to Ryan, who’s either in shock or in love.

“Drink?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Ryan breathes. “What the fuck.”

***

Time whirls past him in a tiki cup, and suddenly they’re winding down the shoot, and Shane’s almost begun to believe that this place is worthy enough, has enough historical merit, to justify the existence of this episode. It probably has more than a little to do with Victoria, who knocks Chris’ helmet off in front of about 60 people and challenges him to an arm wrestling match, much to Shane and Ryan’s delight. 

“I mean, _Buzz Aldrin_ is a member, how bad could it be?” Shane whispers to Ryan, who just looks at him blankly, as if he can’t follow Shane’s train of thought, as if he hasn’t been reading Shane’s mind all night. 

“Let’s get Mark to set up the closing shot,” Suggests Brittney. She’s wary, Shane knows, and keen to get them both out of there before the rum makes any further inroads into their bloodstream. 

They’re so close to wrapping this up and leaving it behind them, for better or worse, and Chris has found them a great spot to film their outro; in an alcove to limit the crowd noise, but with a view of the impressive, if repulsive, mammoth skull that dominates the main hall. It would have been perfect if not for-

“Is that a _bald eagle?_ Is that allowed? _”_

Shane follows Ryan’s line of sight to yet another animal, stuffed and mounted, wings outstretched majestically, talons posed as though about to end the life of a large rodent.

“That’s obviously a golden eagle, Ryan,” Shane replies, and thinks back to his high school class on spiritually significant animals. “Which is just as illegal to own as a bald eagle.” 

“We’re permitted to display that,” Chris grits out. His ears are bright red where they stick out from under his recently reclaimed pith helmet. 

“Hey,” Shane says to Ryan in a stage whisper. “At least it was stolen from this country.” 

Which cracks Ryan up, which gives Shane a thrill. Chris spins on his heel and storms from the room. Brittney, with a frustrated huff, jogs after him. Shane wonders if they owe her a raise. 

“I don’t think we’re allowed to come back,” Ryan says, and he looks exactly as cut up about it as Shane does. They grin, idiotically, at each other for a moment. Mark clears his throat. 

“Sorry Mark.” Ryan hasn’t dragged his eyes from Shane’s yet, and Shane never wants to look away again. 

Shane stumbles through his outro, hoping it seems charming rather than just blundering, distracted by Ryan, who nails his parts, as always. It’s all fine, and they’re drunk and loose and enjoying each other, so of course the bits start. 

_Let’s do a take with the eagle_ Ryan suggests, and it’s not as if Shane has suddenly discovered how to say no to him, so they try one take with their arms around the eagle — 

“This looks dumb, guys,” Mark says, shaking his head.

— and they do another take where they shake hands with the eagle, which is funny right up until the moment Ryan discovers that the talons are exactly as razor-sharp as they look, as one slips under Ryan’s thumbnail and slices the skin. 

“Fuck!” Ryan jerks back from the eagle, sending it rocking on its plinth. 

Time slows as Ryan brings the injured thumb to his lip. Maybe Ryan’s even drunker than he looks, because he misses his mouth the first time and smears a little blood on the fullest part of his bottom lip — when did Shane start noticing where Ryan’s lips were fullest? Sometime in the last hour, or maybe the last year, or maybe within a minute of first meeting him, years ago — and Shane’s already so close and so drunk that it’s nothing at all to grab Ryan’s hand and pull it close. Pull, or maybe _yank_ , because Ryan stumbles into him with a tiny gasp, and his free hand comes up to steady on Shane’s chest. 

“You hurt yourself, bud,” Shane murmurs. He can only see the injury clearly if he closes one eye. It’s just a small, reddened scratch, with barely a drop of blood that drips down to the first knuckle. 

“It’s nothing,” Ryan mutters, as if Shane is broadcasting his thoughts aloud. Shane’s not even sure he didn’t. Nothing would surprise him at this point, not with the amount of rum he’s ingested. 

Is it merely rum, then, that compels Shane to lower Ryan’s captive hand, to close his mouth around that thumb? Is rum responsible for Shane applying the lightest suction, letting his tongue trip over the cut and back? Is it rum that makes his eyes drop closed, unable to watch Ryan when he pulls his hand away gently, breathing hard through his nose. 

“Is that-” Shane’s breathing hard too, hard enough to pick up on camera, and Ryan’s persistent flush and bitten lips aren’t helping matters. “Are we good, do you think, Mark?”

A long pause, while Shane watches Ryan and tries not to, and Ryan watches Shane openly, and Mark glances between them. 

“Uhhhhhhh-” 

When Shane looks at Mark, he averts his eyes, pulling gaffer tape from one pocket and a bandaid from the other, like he’s not even surprised. 

“-Yeah, I think we’re good, Shane.”

Shane doesn’t wait for another word, not from Mark, not from Ryan. The door to the single bathroom he knows is immediately behind him, (the Scorpions have sent him to that bathroom more than a few times tonight) and he backs through it without a thought.

***

He’s not even safe from taxidermied animals and the immense pressure of his own dysfunction here, in the cramped and ancient bathroom. There’s a wooden mask hung next to the mirror, its straw hair hangs down over the ear of a small stuffed lemur that shares a shelf with potpourri and spare toilet rolls. It makes it look like the wretched little creature has a wig on. Its eyes twinkle, or maybe it’s Shane’s eyes, or maybe it’s the alcohol. Shane tries to remember a time when he’d been this scared, this horny, and this drunk all at once. Not for decades, surely. 

“What am I going to do about this, then,” Shane asks the mask, who remains implacably silent. He turns to the Lemur, and opens his mouth, only to hear the unlocked bathroom door open. 

It’s no surprise when Ryan slips through and leans back to shut the door with a click. 

“That’s a good way to walk in on someone taking a shit or having a cry, bud,” Shane tells him — tells the reflection of him in the black glass eyes of a dead primate. 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ryan shrugs, folding his arms. (He seems infuriatingly sober all of a sudden. He’s not even talking to anthropological artifacts) “Hopefully not the last time.”

 _That_ makes Shane turn and look at Ryan with a furrowed brow. “You hope it’s not the last time you walk in on me taking a shit? That’s a weird position to take, even for you.” 

Ryan’s gone red and laughing, of course, because there’s not a poop joke in the world he won’t laugh at. He’s flapping a hand, and as off-center as Shane feels, making Ryan laugh still makes him smile involuntarily. 

“That’s not what I-” Ryan’s positively giggling now, and yeah, probably drunker than Shane had thought. “I mean, I hope you- I don’t want- you can _talk to me_ , Shane.” 

Shane feels like he’s out of his own body, watching himself over his own shoulder, watching Ryan stumble slightly as he steps forward, still smiling, resting a hand on the sink. Shane’s watching this play out in fish-eye lens through the mechanically useless eyes of a long-dead lemur in a musty bathroom. Is he the lemur? Or is the lemur in him? Either way, he’s completely lost his fucking mind. Ryan’s just said something, hasn’t he? 

“Talk about what?” Shane tries, “About being followed around by the moth-eaten, straw-filled bodies of exotic animals? About terrifying older women, and their dubiously acquired deadly skills? About the sheer volume of mustache, and how it could be contained in a single room?”

It would be a better monologue if he hadn’t hiccuped through the whole thing, Shane thinks. Ryan taps a finger on the sink thoughtfully. 

“Did you come in here to puke, or to avoid me, Shane?” He asks, stepping just inside Shane’s personal space. 

“That one,” Shane replies. “That first one, I mean. Or- Both, maybe, I don’t know.”

Shane can almost still feel the pressure of Ryan’s thumb, still; the ghost of a thumb, resting on his tongue, his bottom teeth, his lip. He would like to feel it again, and he’s growing hard, standing so close to Ryan and thinking of it. Ryan’s eyes flick down once, twice, but Shane’s too far gone to be embarrassed.

Ryan moves closer still. It’s warm in this bathroom, barely ventilated, and the cloying stink of artificial rose petals itches Shane’s nose. It’s warm, and there’s a sheen on Ryan’s forehead, and his hair has been sweat-soaked, dried, and sweat-soaked again, and it’s curling appealingly around his temples. Shane’s seeing this through some kind of advanced lemur vision, surely. Either that or Ryan’s gotten awfully close. He’s close enough, Shane discovers shortly, to curl his hands around Shane’s biceps and sit him forcefully down on the closed toilet lid that Shane didn’t realize was right behind him. Sitting, swaying, Shane feels worse than ever. 

“Did I get drugged by the weird old safari poacher dudes, Ryan,” he whispers. Ryan kneels on the tile in front of him — which is disgusting, which is heart-warming — and presses Shane’s hair back.

“Poison dart?” He suggests with a quirked mouth. “No. I watched you drink, at a minimum, 5 cocktails, pal.”

“Oh, so you’ve been watching me, Bergara?” 

Shane’s not sure what has possessed him to say that like a come-on, not sure what’s possessed him to do anything he’s done so far today. He’s got the height advantage here, like he always does, sitting while Ryan is kneeling in front of him, but he feels handled. Ryan pushes his hair back again, and it strikes Shane as so painfully, desperately intimate when their eyes meet and sparks arc across those bare few inches between them. 

It’s an inevitability when Ryan pulls Shane’s head down to press their lips together in this dingy fucking bathroom, and only the slightest surprise to Shane that the kiss feels like something falling perfectly into place. The intense surge of energy that courses through Shane in that moment forces him to his feet, and he yanks Ryan up off the tiles, to press his body into Shane’s own body, to let Ryan press him back into the wall. 

Ryan’s so soft everywhere but for his stubble and the front of his stupid, tiny, pink shorts. When they’re detached for long enough from their frantic necking for Shane to glance down, the thin material tents obscenely. It’s an image that zings through Shane’s eyes like electricity and settles with a hum in the corner of his brain where he keeps treasured memories. It’s too much to expect him not to kiss Ryan again, and again, to memorize him like this.

“Shane,” Ryan gasps after several long minutes, when Shane works his hand down in the front of his shorts. 

“ _Shane,_ ” Ryan whimpers when Shane spreads his whole hand to press at the front of Ryan’s briefs, where he’s damp. 

It pleases Shane, this little reversal, to bring Ryan to pieces in here. He’s also — as the fog of his most recent Scorpion clears somewhat — suddenly very cognizant that Ryan’s only in here because there’s no lock on the door. Problematic or not, these people almost certainly don’t deserve to walk in on Shane and Ryan with the heads of their dicks dripping out the top of their waistbands. 

“We should leave,” Shane tells Ryan, but Shane’s hand is still working over the front of Ryan’s briefs 3 minutes later, coaxing quiet sobs from him, when Brittney raps on the door.

“Shane? If you _see Ryan_ can you tell him we’re packing up Mark’s car and leaving soon?”

Shane’s hand stills. 

“Uh, I haven’t seen him,” he calls back. Ryan brings his palm to his forehead and groans. 

“Okay,” Brittney replies. “Well, if you _do see him...”_

And Shane suspects the jig is up.

***

Stacking atop the already towering list of reasons this day is the most unprofessional in Shane’s career to date, they bound down the stairs and fly past Mark and Brittney, who have pulled Mark’s Toyota up to the curb and are packing equipment into the trunk. 

“Found him!” Shane shouts over his shoulder as they pass. He’s at once mortified and exhilarated, can feel laughter in his diaphragm that’s threatening to escape. 

“Gotta get the big guy home before he pukes on a stoat or something!” Ryan calls out to them. 

The second they’re round the corner and out of sight, Ryan tugs him into a dark side street and presses him into that grainy stucco wall, sinks his hands into Shane’s hair, tugs his head down firmly until their mouths meet again.

“Can we go home?” Ryan breathes the request into Shane’s teeth. “Can I come-” 

Shane’s kissing him quiet and fumbling for his phone to order a ride before Ryan can get the request out. It would be too much, he thinks, to hear that aloud. Better to let Ryan show him. 

***

And show he does, wordlessly marching Shane through his own flat and into the shower. Even before this night, the way Ryan anticipated his needs made Shane entertain the possibility of mind-reading, and tonight he was grateful for it; between the heat of the clubhouse, and the wide-mouthed tiki mugs that dumped more sugary cocktail on his chin than his tongue, Shane was sticky and uncomfortable. He was also desperate to peel those shorts off Ryan, now that he knew he’d be allowed. 

Ryan flits around Shane’s apartment like he belongs there, drawing curtains, filling a glass of water and pressing it into Shane’s hand, turning the shower head to hot — and all wordlessly, as if something important will break at the sound of their voices. 

The atmosphere _is_ thick enough to be visible, almost; the tension between them like a taught web, and every strand built from a look or a touch. It intensifies, there in Shane’s bathroom, where he can pluck Ryan’s shirt open with trembling fingers and Ryan can reach up to push Shane’s bandanna until it drops to the floor, freeing his hair to fall around his temples. Since the moment Ryan barged in on him in the bathroom, they’ve barely gone a minute without touching; and still, Shane can’t shake the need to be closer, kiss harder, press forward. Good, then, that Ryan seems to feel just as strongly about it, and keeps his hands moving across Shane’s shoulders, down his back, up his arms. He’s constantly mapping, even when he walks them into the shower and under the stream of purifying hot water. 

Shane hasn’t been less than half-hard in hours, he thinks, but now he’s just in _pain_ ; hard and desperate and shaking to pieces in Ryan’s arms. Ryan’s so close now that Shane’s almost scared to move up that last inch and see if they fit together like this. If Shane’s body could make noise right now, it would be whistling like a tea kettle. 

The silence between them — so unnatural for them, so different from their usual ceaseless chatter — can only last so long, and when finally, finally, blessedly, Ryan cups his hands on Shane’s ass and brings their bodies flush, they groan straight into each other’s mouths, matching sounds of relief that are so absurd that it sets them off laughing. Laughing, rubbing together, moaning under the hot spray, like this is the most natural thing in the world. Like this was always where they were bound to end up. 

It’s too soon and not soon enough when Ryan stills them both for just long enough to reach around blindly to snag Shane’s CeraVe from the vanity, and even then, he never stops touching Shane; he has a palm flat on Shane’s chest, trailing down to cup his balls, tracing back, way back to stroke at Shane’s perineum, and back, back, back even further. 

Shane’s been hard for so long that he doesn’t flag an inch when Ryan first presses into him with lotion-coated fingers. 

“Ryan,” Shane’s begging, in no time at all. “Let’s get out.”

“Why?” He feels rather than hears Ryan grunt into his shoulder, fingers working at an agonizingly gentle pace. 

“I-” Shane’s never been good at honesty, at earnestness, but he’s likely to scream if Ryan doesn’t start fucking him into next week in the next 30 seconds, so that’s what he tells Ryan. 

Shane’s never seen the man move so fast, shutting off the shower and stepping out in seconds after the words leave Shane’s mouth. 

(Dimly, as Ryan drapes Shane in one of his own towels, he registers that Ryan almost managed to fuck him in the shower. despite the inherent perils of their height difference. Despite the fact that Shane has never found it remotely appealing. Maybe Shane should have let him.)

Now that they’ve started it’s too painful to stop. 

“Bed,” Shane whispers when they’re halfway through the bathroom door. 

“Yeah, bed,” Ryan agrees, stopping to kiss lines from Shane’s collarbone to his nipple, but he makes no effort to move down the hall to the bedroom. In fact, he drops them both where they are, and Shane registers the pain of the metal threshold digging into his knee. 

It’s there, with Shane’s tailbone on cold damp tile, and his shoulders on carpet and his head pillowed in Ryan’s hand, that Ryan presses shudderingly into to Shane until he’s seated root-to-tip and Shane’s whiting out from the feeling of fullness and rightness. Shane’s eyes are prickling and wet, but it’s okay; when he looks into the deep dark eyes above him, they are glassy and moist and full of every emotion Shane’s ever seen there, and a few he can’t name. 

It’s probably humiliatingly brief, this first encounter, but time means nothing to Shane just now. He’s all at once being kissed in a beige bathroom, and watching Ryan from across a crowded room, and coming over his own stomach, and dripping Ryan’s come out onto his hallway carpet while Ryan rocks back into him, softening, like he doesn’t want it to end. 

Once Ryan starts complaining about the tile digging into his knees, they crawl to the middle of Shane’s living room, drip-drying in the heat of the summer night and speaking softly about nothing until they fall asleep. 

When he wakes again, Shane stretches out a foot to nudge open his sliding door, to let the cool and fresh and peaceful early morning air trickle in over their prone bodies on the floor. 

Shane wonders if he should be feeling… _anything_ other than sated and happy. Perhaps he should be nervous, for the undeniably complicated turn their lives are about to take. Maybe he should worry that this was nothing but an alcohol-fueled disaster.

Except the sun’s about to come up, and Shane’s pretty confident that he’d pass a field sobriety test by now, and Ryan’s wrung him out like nothing else, yet Shane finds he’d still let Ryan press him into the nearest flat surface and do whatever he likes. Ryan finally stirs, shivers in the cooler air. It’s incomparable, the way he feels as Ryan’s pupils expand to black when Shane rolls him over on the carpet to press their bodies together again, and maybe, maybe he’ll think about never pulling away for as long as he lives. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr](https://allredpen.tumblr.com/) if you wish.


End file.
